Abstract
The objective of this study was to compare immediate intramammary antimicrobial treatment of mild and moderate cases of clinical mastitis (CM) with a selective treatment protocol based on on-farm culture results using Accumast®. The study was conducted at a 2600 cow commercial farm in Northeast Germany. Using a randomized design, mild and moderate clinical mastitis cases were assigned to either the blanket therapy (BT) or pathogen-based therapy (SELECT) group. Overall, 468 cases were used for final analyses (BT = 236; SELECT = 232). The percentage of cases assigned to the blanket and pathogen-based groups that received intramammary therapy were 100 and 69.9%, respectively. Implementation of a pathogen-based treatment protocol for mild and moderate CM cases resulted in no significant difference in post-event milk production, somatic cell count, survival to 30 d, and days spent in the hospital compared with a blanket therapy protocol. Cows in the SELECT group had reduced odds of being culled within 60 d post CM (odds ratio = 0.54; 95% CI = 0.31–0.93; p = 0.027). The use of a pathogen-based treatment protocol using an on-farm culture system has the potential to efficiently reduce antimicrobial use without negative effects on health.
Highlights
The majority of antimicrobial treatments in dairy cows are administered for the treatment of clinical mastitis
Cases resulted in no significant difference in post-event milk production, somatic cell count, survival to 30 d, and days spent in the hospital compared with a blanket therapy protocol
We observed no difference in days spent in the hospital pen
Summary
The majority of antimicrobial treatments in dairy cows are administered for the treatment of clinical mastitis. 10.9 million antibiotic treatments were conducted in Germany in 2015 related to mastitis (Wallmann, 2016 personal communication). Most of these treatments are not based on specific etiological information [1]. Selective therapy for clinical mastitis using on-farm culture results can replace the routine blanket use of antimicrobials in mild and moderate clinical mastitis cases [2]. Extended treatment with intramammary antimicrobials was shown to be advantageous for clinical mastitis cases caused by environmental Streptococci [7,8] and Staphylococcus aureus [7,9]. Implementation of a selective treatment approach can reduce the use of antimicrobials on a given farm (i.e., no treatment for cows with no-growth or Gram-negative bacteria) and might have the potential to improve bacteriological cure (i.e., extended treatment for Streptococcus uberis and Staphylococcus aureus). A study comparing four commercial on-farm culture methods concluded that one test kit (Accumast® )
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